1st Closed-door Workshop on ASEAN Sustainability

“From Strategy to Action: Ecosystem Management and Carbon Neutrality in ASEAN”

About the workshop
This closed-door workshop is part of “Mainstreaming Sustainability in ASEAN”, one the five ASEAN Think Tanks Summit (ATTS) workstreams1, carried out by a working group of experts coordinated by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA). There will be 2 workshops in this workstream, the first of which is on ecosystem management and carbon neutrality as described in this draft programme. The second workshop will be held in June 2025 on renewable energy and connectivity.

Recommendations from the two workshops will feed into the annual ATTS in Q3 2025 at the ASEAN Secretariat and a consolidated policy note to be circulated to ASEAN Member States and the ASEAN Secretariat. Inaugurated in September 2024, the ATTS is organised by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) on behalf of the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS) network of think tanks, with the support of the ASEAN Secretariat to revitalise Track 2 Dialogue and contribution to ASEAN development and post-2025 vision. 

Programme 
With the world facing the effects of climate change and the impact of human activities on the environment, sustainability needs to be placed at the core of both national and regional economic development strategies. Southeast Asia is one of the most biodiverse areas of the world and ASEAN Member States must explore ways to keep the region’s ecosystems intact while still achieving economic development objectives that require land use – such as the production of food, export commodities, and biofuels.

Ecosystem management is also crucial for ASEAN’s future carbon economy. Governments and businesses are looking to generate carbon credits from ecosystem conservation and restoration projects, which can be used to offset hard-to-abate emissions on the road towards net zero. The ASEAN Strategy for Carbon Neutrality (2023) identifies the need for the region to develop a regional framework for the production and export of high-quality carbon credits, along with policies to harmonise carbon credit systems and make carbon markets interoperable across borders.